How should IC discrimination be handled?

[Sunny]

This is the point, here, that was the original bone of contention:

Games set in crappy/oppressive worlds have flourished before, but it seems like there was some seismic shift over the last few years where everyone got worried they'd be labeled some sort of '-ist' and now everything's sanitized and pretty boring. People don't seem to leap to OOC accusations of the player behind a character being a murderer when that character kills a bunch of people, and I'm confused why we seem to have decided that's self-evident but a character being a sexist or a racist is legitimate cause for OOC concern.

There is one game that's 'sanitized and boring' by these metrics. One. And the response to that is a resounding 'ffs, it's one game, it's not the end of the world if some of us want to not play in the -ism environments when there are actually plenty of games that fit the wanted criteria'. And then there was all this lovely misrepresentation and hollering because how dare we, I guess.

[Collective]

@surreality said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@collective I should be out the door already, I really should, but I think you maybe need to look at that statement again.

It's very easy to infer what @faraday did, and I read it the same way when what is literally stated is that people are "arguing for the right to be vile and hurtful" by discussing any inclusion of these subjects at all, no matter what checks, balances, or protections might be in place.

That is a pretty serious accusation to make, and it's an accusation about people behind the screen and those having the discussion, not any hypothetical character they might be playing. Please re-read; I think you'll see why this is a problematic statement and why it's being interpreted in the way it is.

And on that note, I'm actually out the door, because work's a thing.

But ... surely you can't be saying that I should moderate my words because they can be painful to real people behind the screen?

I mean, do I need to playing a character on a MU to get immunity from that obvious bit of common decency?

Here's the thing: Why is it hurtful to suggest that it's hurtful to use that kind of language and bring those situations into play? Why is calling a gay player's gay character a fag okay, but saying 'I have to wonder why you want the right to call somebody a fag' not okay?

I'm having a problem with the disconnect in logic and empathy here. And this is, by the way, a textbook conversation about dealing with Others. One of the quickest responses is always, 'How can we make this about how uncomfortable it makes me when you talk about how uncomfortable I'm making you by doing/saying this thing?

For the record, I'm not accusing anyone of anything. I AM bringing up the obvious and fundamental questions that underlay the whole disagreement. And that is, yes, uncomfortable.

I am unironically sorry folks are having to think about this stuff. Apparently for the first time.

[bored]

@sunny I think claiming that this is 100% limited to Arx is a bit misleading. It's just a visible example because it's large (and because it's a successor, in spirit, playerbase and staff, to a game that was racist and sexist turned up to 11).

For instance, we had/have (I dunno if the reboot is still running) the two Arthurian games that both made a pretty strong point of removing any kind of gender imbalance. This is despite the fact that these games were rooted in eras and genres of literature dripping with sexism and that it was even part of the game mechanics/rules (at least for the first game, using Pendragon). Not shockingly, it actually caused some non-trivial problems (for instance, landed women were thematically extremely rare, so they were mechanically worth more points to marry - but that gets turned on its head a bit when anyone can CG one). That game also had someone screaming about racism too, although granted it was 90% Cirno so who cares.

[deadculture]

@bored said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@sunny I think claiming that this is 100% limited to Arx is a bit misleading. It's just a visible example because it's large (and because it's a successor, in spirit, playerbase and staff, to a game that was racist and sexist turned up to 11).

For instance, we had/have (I dunno if the reboot is still running) the two Arthurian games that both made a pretty strong point of removing any kind of gender imbalance. This is despite the fact that these games were rooted in eras and genres of literature dripping with sexism and that it was even part of the game mechanics/rules (at least for the first game, using Pendragon). Not shockingly, it actually caused some non-trivial problems (for instance, landed women were thematically extremely rare, so they were mechanically worth more points to marry - but that gets turned on its head a bit when anyone can CG one). That game also had someone screaming about racism too, although granted it was 90% Cirno so who cares.

100% Cirno

[Sunny]

@bored If there are other games that are doing the same thing presently, cool (also which ones I would like to look at them!). I was objecting to the statement that they were all over the place, that all period games were doing this, that people who want to roleplay this sort of thing are left out in the cold. I can think of 3 period games off the top of my head that are presently active, and 2 out of the 3 do NOT have these rules. The claim was that there was a seismic shift in the hobby.

[bored]

@deadculture Its too long to remember it all, so I could be wrong, but I think, despite Cirno leading it, there was a non-zero number of people supporting him in the thread vs everyone telling him to shut up (which was the correct response) so... even there, you kind of saw people being very willing to jump on 'omg racism!', even when it was clearly unjustified.

@sunny Sure. I'd still say there's a larger shift because even where places may not have this rule, I do think you see staff being a lot more aware or reactive to it. Not every game puts its cultural norms into news files.

[Pyrephox]

Okay, so here is where people are getting confused about whether you're advocating for all -isms to never be brought up in games:

@collective said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

Here's the thing: Why is it hurtful to suggest that it's hurtful to use that kind of language and bring those situations into play? Why is calling a gay player's gay character a fag okay, but saying 'I have to wonder why you want the right to call somebody a fag' not okay?

Because right there? It looks an /awful/ lot like you're doing just that, and suggesting that the players themselves are hurting other players by wanting to play a fictional character who may express certain real world bigotries.

Also, I think it's time that we consider the other side of it, as well, in that every player is (probably) an adult who is presumably capable of making their own decisions, and not being forced to log into any particular game. Which means, really, that if you as a person are deeply wounded by a fictional character using a slur, then there's some responsibility to curate your own experiences, and either making it clear OOC that you're not interested in that sort of play experience, or choosing to not join, or to leave, games with settings that allow that.

I like Arx; it's a second world fantasy game that has chosen to make a very egalitarian society, and that's a lot of fun to play. But if Arx was a game set in Meiji-era Japan, even Meiji-era Japan with magic, then I would want and expect to see some level of the cultural inequalities that existed then as play elements. If someone played a burakumin, then I'd damned well expect to see them struggle with ostracism and bigotry (within reason that allowed them to still participate in the game) and the changing nature of their social status, and if I were playing someone who wasn't a member of that caste or defined by being 'progressive', I would absolutely portray my character having those bigoted stances, even though it's remotely possible that someone else on the game OOCly could be a member of that society. Because that's the setting of the game, and it's an interesting conflict. I wouldn't make it 'the defining trait' of my character, because outside of certain media, bigotry rarely IS the defining trait of someone's character - it's a distressing and unsightly extra, like a prominent, hairy mole that draws your eye to it at the worst possible times.

And it's fun to play characters who have a couple of those, especially when they tie directly into making a setting not just like the everyday world, and a character not just you in funny dress.

[bored]

@deadculture

I went back and found the thread. Hilariously, the first post it went to was me downvoted to -2 for calling Cirno a troll and @Arkandel upvoted to 5 telling me 'just because he's a troll, doesn't mean he's wrong.'

So yeah, SJW MSB was in general largely supportive of Cirno's unfounded banshee wailing about nonexistent racism.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

I mean I don't even look at stuff like Arx and stuff like BSG (which also has skin-color-based racism and sexism and homophobia just not be things in show canon) as applicable to a conversation about whether you should include real-world discrimination on a historical game or a current world game. Those are fictional worlds created by storytellers/writers, who made choices to tell stories that introduced other kinds of conflict. Why should people in Arx be sexist in ways 2017 Americans or 1400s Brits were sexist? Why should people on a spaceship in a futuristic sister culture with only vague ties to Earth be racist in the ways Earth people are racist? If anything, grafting RL mores onto made-up cultures because we just can't expect players to play something different than themselves aggravates me, especially when the argument of "realism" is made for it. Fictional world! It can be whatevs as long as whatevs has internal consistency.

Whereas. If I'm playing a MU set in the 1920s, I might be interested in playing off First Wave feminism or the pressure large, growing immigrant populations exerted on American culture at the time. Somebody else might just want to play something more stylized with fantasy gangsters. Neither is WRONG, but the people running the game should be clear about the kind of environment they want.

[Arkandel]

@collective said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

Here's the thing: Why is it hurtful to suggest that it's hurtful to use that kind of language and bring those situations into play? Why is calling a gay player's gay character a fag okay, but saying 'I have to wonder why you want the right to call somebody a fag' not okay?

It's not. This debate - no debate - can be had if we can't disagree, or even just argue, without worrying someone will have their feelings hurt.

We need to have both of these conversations. Is it (and when is it) okay to discriminate IC, and is it possible someone might be upset at the idea OOC?

We won't get an answer. There's no answer. It's not like someone's going to put an idea here that will make everyone go "WOAH I never thought of that. It fits all games, it addresses everyone's concerns and we can just run with it now". Different MU* will need to do their thing after weighing the pros and cons, same as with... a lot of other issues games need to pick their poison on.

But we still need to have the conversation.

@pyrephox said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

I like Arx; it's a second world fantasy game that has chosen to make a very egalitarian society, and that's a lot of fun to play. But if Arx was a game set in Meiji-era Japan, even Meiji-era Japan with magic, then I would want and expect to see some level of the cultural inequalities that existed then as play elements.

I agree with the distinction, but I also think it doesn't really answer the issue here. Obviously (?) fantasy games can dodge IC discrimination by essentially masking it behind IC concepts that don't have a direct equivalence in the real word; mountain savages, Drow, vampiric monsters or whatever are they can hated freely. Similarly Hollywood-izations of historic settings can 'fix' the past in basically the same way, by turning them into a fantasy version of their origins.

But when is the actual real world situation appropriate for a game? Never? Always? Only for a select audience? What's the best way for staff to implement these things if they try to go for realism? What are some policies they can use when players start being assholes? What are things they should be on the lookout for? How do they handle a case where a player ends up feeling bad because of the situations depicted on their grid anyway?

Those are questions I'm curious to see takes on.

[deadculture]

Realms Adventurous, the Fifth Kingdom both did away with race/gender discrimination. One of them even had one of the landholding NPCs be of a different ethnicity than 'Briton' and he was kind of a big deal stat-wise, ICly.

Of course, you still had to contend with 'those damn Saxons invading our land' or whatever, but that's every war, ever, unless you're fighting monsters and not men.

Oh, and the 8th Sea, as has been mentioned, is pretty equal in regards to how shipcrews are rostered. I don't think you'll find much in the way of gender discrimination there, at least functionally speaking.

[bored]

I'm also not sold that 'fantasy racism' safely, 100% avoids the nasty implications.

It may redirect them enough that some players do not have the negative RL associations they would with a more directly relatable versions. But I've also seen plenty of people latch onto the fantasy versions to a degree that was intense and obsessive, which saw them cross into OOC nastiness vs. those players, and which probably (and in one case not even probably, I know it for a fact) related to RL views. This is almost all re: 'halfies' on Firan, but I could see it happening elsewhere if you made those thematic animosities intense enough.

[deadculture]

@bored said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@deadculture

I went back and found the thread. Hilariously, the first post it went to was me downvoted to -2 for calling Cirno a troll and @Arkandel upvoted to 5 telling me 'just because he's a troll, doesn't mean he's wrong.'

So yeah, SJW MSB was in general largely supportive of Cirno's unfounded banshee wailing about nonexistent racism.

I think it's silly for people not want to tackle racism, sexism, any other kind of prejudice in a historical or semi-historical setting. I think a detective who would only use politically correct terms when they're a noir-themed asshole loose cannon would just be sad and something would feel amiss.

Can you imagine Scarface without the slurs? Can you imagine The Godfather without the hard language? I can't. That's why I don't play in games that are sanitized in this manner, but am glad they exist for people who think it's a necessity.

I just hope it doesn't become the absolute norm.

[Collective]

@pyrephox said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

Okay, so here is where people are getting confused about whether you're advocating for all -isms to never be brought up in games:

@collective said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

Here's the thing: Why is it hurtful to suggest that it's hurtful to use that kind of language and bring those situations into play? Why is calling a gay player's gay character a fag okay, but saying 'I have to wonder why you want the right to call somebody a fag' not okay?

Because right there? It looks an /awful/ lot like you're doing just that, and suggesting that the players themselves are hurting other players by wanting to play a fictional character who may express certain real world bigotries.

Also, I think it's time that we consider the other side of it, as well, in that every player is (probably) an adult who is presumably capable of making their own decisions, and not being forced to log into any particular game. Which means, really, that if you as a person are deeply wounded by a fictional character using a slur, then there's some responsibility to curate your own experiences, and either making it clear OOC that you're not interested in that sort of play experience, or choosing to not join, or to leave, games with settings that allow that.

Which sounds an awful like you're saying 'people like you don't belong on games I like'.

See? Everybody can read stuff into other people's words that they aren't saying with just enough doubt, if you squint, to make it work.

There is a difference, to me at least, between being a bigot and never having considered the possibility that maybe your 'ironic' or 'just RP' uses of loaded expressions or situations might come off as bigoted to somebody who doesn't know you and isn't inclined to give a total stranger a second chance.

I ask the questions because despite what some people are saying in the thread, there are people, lots and lots and lots of good, decent, friendly people, who just haven't examined behaviors that are hurtful to others, sometimes. Not because they are tiki torch carrying Nazi fucktards, but because they don't have the experience or the framework to see how somebody else could be hurt by something they see as playful or innocent.

It is not unexpected for anger to be some people's first reaction to being asked those questions. Or even to be hurt that anybody could possibly think they might be a bad person. Which is why, again and again and again and AGAIN, I've said I don't think that.

But I do think that talking this starts with admitting that there are contexts where those behaviors can be harmful and that it is not unreasonable to say and feel that.

[Arkandel]

@bored said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

But I've also seen plenty of people latch onto the fantasy versions to a degree that was intense and obsessive, which saw them cross into OOC nastiness vs. those players, and which probably (and in one case not even probably, I know it for a fact) related to RL views.

I chalk this up to players not being able to properly separate IC from OOC very well, which is a way more widespread issue. It happens everywhere, too, across the board and on nearly every game I've even seen. Even where there's no real 'race' per se or mindset for someone to use when picking a faction.

You even see it in Horde versus Alliance on WoW, like there's a kind of player who chooses one over the other. It's how we are... tribal creatures who need a 'them' so there can be an 'us' we then get to be part of.

So if someone's bitching about them asshole halfies or whatever it is... that's on them. I can't honestly say it's the game's fault for having a freakin' halfling race. If they had werewolves instead it'd be them asshole furries or them asshole bloodsuckers or whatever the hell. If you want to stick a label on others badly enough you'll figure out what to write on it.

[Sunny]

@arkandel

Good luck. It's hard to have a discussion when one of the perspectives involved is continually grossly misinterpreted because people are threatened by the very EXISTENCE of an opposing viewpoint.

[Arkandel]

@sunny said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@arkandel

Good luck. It's hard to have a discussion when one of the perspectives involved is continually grossly misinterpreted because people are threatened by the very EXISTENCE of an opposing viewpoint.

That's one of the benefits of having the discussion. If we never do then the perspectives are never challenged, and we can only get so far from an echoing chamber of talking to people who already agree with our viewpoints 100%.

[Collective]

@sunny

Wait, give me a couple of minutes and I can figure out a way to interpret that as you saying that senior citizens should be tossed into a wood chipper.

[bored]

@deadculture Yeah, as much as people counter 'realism' with 'omg magic and vampirez how can realism?!!' verisimilitude of setting is still a thing. If you're trying to depict something historic (even in the, I'll steal the term, 'Netflix costume drama' level of historic), it is notable when any obvious, prominent aspect of that historic setting is changed. Entire genres can be built on this trick (Steampunk), but in the same way that someone walking around with red basketball sneakers in Victorian London would visibly be 'off', a woman taking on the cultural/social position and trappings of a man would be visibly off.

You can make a 'historic-ish' game with any number or severity of deviations, but the more of them you make, the less identifiable/resonant the setting is going to be with the original. Per the Steampunk example, this may be OK or even totally awesome, but it's a design decision that has pretty serious implication on what exactly you're making. And at a certain # of changes, you're no longer making a Netflix costume drama, you're making a fantasy game.

Again, it's an OK choice to choose to do this! But it is what you're doing.

[Sunny]

@arkandel said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@sunny said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@arkandel

Good luck. It's hard to have a discussion when one of the perspectives involved is continually grossly misinterpreted because people are threatened by the very EXISTENCE of an opposing viewpoint.

That's one of the benefits of having the discussion. If we never do then the perspectives are never challenged, and we can only get so far from an echoing chamber of talking to people who already agree with our viewpoints 100%.

I disagree. The point of having a discussion is absolutely to examine differing viewpoints and the like, but complete misrepresentation of a point makes it impossible to actually talk. If I say 'I like it when it's warm' and someone responds to it with 'well, I think sunsets and sunrises are just as pretty as a summer blue sky', that's not a discussion.